Gibeau: Criterion making a game every year would “burn them out”

EA Games boss Frank Gibeau has said that Criterion Games won’t be forced to make a game every year, saying such a thing would be “the worst possible idea.”

“The worst possible idea would be to make Criterion build a game every year,” Gibeau told Eurogamer. “That would limit their creativity and hurt quality.

He admitted that there is now a strategy in place to alternate between developers for Need for Speed games every November. Gibeau didn’t openly admit that Criterion was fully dedicated to NFS from here on out following the success of Hot Pursuit last year, though.

“We’ve designed an alternating strategy in driving for us to continue to build on the high quality we’ve established with Hot Pursuit and try new things.

“But at the same time we can share certain technologies and features. The new Need for Speed is on the Frostbite 2 technology, which allows us to do a lot of things we’ve never been able to do before. We’re using the animation system from EA Sports.”

Gibeau added: “We’ve tried to get a team to do it every year. You burn them out. You can’t do it at the level of quality the market wants now.”

Need for Speed: The Run, being made by Black Box in Vancouver, is the first EA game to include Frostbite 2 that isn’t Battlefield-related. It launches this November.